By Fran Ilich I bought the game because of its obvious relation to the cyberpunk genre and today's global neoliberal reality hoping that some players would open their eyes to it without having to resort to heated political debate. The cover art also inspired me towards buying it: a couple of guys camouflaged with black suits (standard urban financier battle gear) puppeteering country symbols (Uncle Sam, the Ayatollah, Europa, a People Liberation Army Soldier) from the comfort of the island of Manhattan, specifically what it seems to be the outline of the Financial District of NYC.It took me about a month to be able to play it, not for lack of trying, but because a minimum of 3 players are needed and its rules seemed to scare everyone away. Yet I stayed calm and on guard. Its not really the fact that its rules are hard to get, but it seems to me that the aspiring players of Megacorps need to grasp a few concepts and share a certain mindframe, if not be rightful open to certain possibilities of how global political economy operates. I am not saying it defeats the purpose, but my intentions with it it certainly was not to preach to the converted. So there you go, another challenge for me.At the beginning one must choose between several culture-jammed corporations: the brasilian Globo media conglomerate that is known to hold hipnotized the population of its country with telenovelas, music, entertainment, sports (particularly soccer), as well as other corps like Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, Lenovo or Disney, that use distinct strategies of the same type. The holdings of our megacorporation will grow, and with it its interests and will soon include industries that might seem completely unrelated to the untrained eye. Depending on the corporation one chooses and random luck, players start by having control over a whole region: NAFTA, European Union, Mercosur, Great Russia, China, Japan, India, Asean, Caliphate, African Federation. Maghreb, Switzerland or the more fictional Asteroid and L-5. No dice are used in the game so from the moment the game begins till it ends, the goal of your megacorp is to use any tactics or strategies to control whole industries - for instance finance, oil, software, media, metals, food- across the world by eliminating competition, establishing cartels or any other means. To achieve this, you can take over countries through war, media, or what otherwise could be understood as sound business. However it goes you will soon see the world become a complex chess board with not enough room for all the megacorps playing, and how these try to extend their power to control a world that clearly has many forms of operating politically and economically, and that can't possibly be managed by only one of them. However each of them aspire to to own the world by competing and distrusting its closest allies, even when pursuing cooperative paths. To make things harder national industries can be intervened by syndicalization or nationalization, countries can change politics from outright dictatorship, kleptocracy, democracy to the far more progressive wikisyndicalism.If I were to describe the game in one phrase it would be: a global sophisticated 21st century version of Monopoly. It takes a few minutes and a little patience for anyone to become inmersed and passionate when playing it, and just as much to get soaked wet in its dystopic cyberpunk leftist concepts. I can only thank Greg Costikyan for designing such an amazing game, now I only hope he gets enough success that one day we get to enjoy a total sim experience designed by him.
